Community Garden
A space to grow food, get your hands dirty, and get to know your neighbors while you're at it.
Founder and community advocate
ANARA
A place where healing starts with land, not paperwork.
Soofia Ahmed · Founder & Director
Start here
Come and see
Attend a retreat
Pop-up day and weekend retreats on rented land, running before the campus exists. The fastest way to feel what ANARA is.
See retreat formats →Fund the work
Support the fund
Founding gifts, programme-related loans, or equity in the app. Every gift is tied to a named, costed piece of the work.
See the ask →Build with us
Partner with us
Hospitals, senior living centres, mosques, foster and kinship agencies, housing authorities, farms. We host through partners rather than duplicate them.
Start a conversation →0%
U.S. adults report feeling lonely
0M
U.S. households face food insecurity
0.0M
U.S. adults experienced a mental health condition this past year
ANARA exists because these numbers didn't have to get this high.
Our Response
Our Response
Building community through land, connection, and generosity.
ANARA is a place-based project for healing and belonging. It's built on four ideas central to Muslim life: ummah (community), diyafa (hospitality), khalifah (stewardship), and sadaqah (generosity). The garden, the retreats, the app, all of it grows out of those four words.
The model
Care moves in every direction.
Most systems sort people into those who receive care and those who give it. ANARA is built the other way: everyone belongs, everyone contributes, everyone is cared for.
Elders
Contributesmentoring, stories, gardening, teaching
Receivessafe housing, meals, healthcare links, purpose
Foster & kinship families
Contributeshospitality, childcare cover, shared meals
Receivesrespite, tutoring, transport, caregiver support
Children & youth
Contributestech help, energy, company
Receivessafety, mentors, outdoor space, belonging
Caregivers & staff
Contributesskill, care, coordination
Receiveshousing, community, relief from burnout
The elder is not a patient. The foster child is not a case. The neighbour who needs help this year is the neighbour who helps next year.
A refuge
The Wellness Center
A space for healing and community connection.
The Wellness Center is a nature-based refuge, open to people of every age. It's a place to heal, connect, and be part of something, through shared time and simple practices repeated often enough that they stick.
Reflection Room
A quiet room built for prayer, mindfulness, and the kind of stillness that's hard to find anywhere else.
Evidence
Proven impact of restorative practices
Nature Therapy
Time outside lowers stress. It's that simple.
Community Gardens
Growing food together builds relationships and puts fresh produce within reach.
Mindfulness Practice
Simple mindfulness habits support mental health and pull people closer together.
Therapeutic Workshops
Guided workshops give people room to heal and build bonds that actually last.
Seasonal Retreats
Connecting generations
Intergenerational
Retreats bring different generations into the same room, working toward the same thing.
Community
People take on shared projects together. That's where empathy and real support come from.
Togetherness
Time in nature, together, builds the kind of memories that hold a community up for years.
Ten-year path
Sequenced, not speculative.
We prove the community works before we buy the land, and prove the land works before we build the village.
Months 0–18
Community before land
Entity, governance, advisory council, and low-capital programmes: elder circles, shared meals, transport, pop-up retreats.
Around year 2
First property
5–15 acres in the Chicago region — chosen on hospital, grocery, transit, school and zoning access, not on acreage.
Years 2–4
Community Care Center
Dining hall, teaching kitchen, café, wellness room, classrooms, reflection space, garden and walking loop.
Years 3–7
Housing takes root
20–30 senior homes at mixed affordability, then 5–10 foster and kinship family homes woven into the same streets.
Years 7–10+
The village
Around 60 elders, 10–20 supportive residents, families, staff and respite housing, held long-term by an endowment.
Digital companion
The ANARA App
A digital companion for healing and growth.
Healing Philosophy
The app carries ANARA's approach into daily life, small affirmations that build emotional wellbeing one day at a time.
Market Potential
The mental wellness app market is headed toward $40.9 billion by 2035. There's real room here.
Community Connection
Inside the app, ANARA members share what's actually working for them and support each other through it.
Phase Development
It launches as a standalone app first. Over time, it grows into a full companion to the physical ANARA community.
Investor Opportunity
Early investors get equity in ANARA App Inc, real financial upside tied to a mission that means something.
Long-term Vision
The goal: something people actually open when things get hard, and a way back to the ANARA community when they need it.
What's inside
Small nudges. Real days.
- A daily quote on your screen
- A reminder that actually shows up
- 5, 10, or 15-minute guided breathing sessions
- Guided movement practices
- A simple checklist for getting out of a rut: move, breathe, walk
- A distraction that isn't doom-scrolling
- A nudge to go see a friend, in person
The Plan
How ANARA is structured
01
ANARA Waqf Foundation
A nonprofit built to hold the land and the Wellness Center itself. Gifts here are tax-deductible and fund the work for the long run.
02
ANARA Retreats
The nonprofit arm that runs retreats, some paid, some subsidized, bringing in revenue while keeping the door open to people who can't pay full price.
03
ANARA App Inc
The for-profit side. A digital companion for healing and growth, and where equity investors come in.
Roadmap
Roadmap to launch
2026 Q3 (target)
Founding Pledge Circle established
2026 Q4 (target)
Self-affirmations app launches
2027 Q1 (target)
Wellness Center campus opens
Invitation
The Ask
Founding investors are invited to join the ANARA Founding Pledge Circle. It starts with a simple, non-binding letter of intent, a real signal of support, nothing locked in.
Founding Gift
Sign the Pledge Circle letter of intent. Non-binding. Your support goes straight into community wellbeing.
Sign the letter of intentParticipation Options
- 01A Waqf founding gift today
- 02A programme-related investment loan
- 03Equity in ANARA App Inc
Multi-million
A founding raise, total capital target
~4%
Annual spending policy target
Midwest
Site search underway, close to nature and regional transportation
The Care Fund
What giving actually buys.
$25A community meal shared at one table
$100Transportation for an elder to appointments
$500Emergency housing assistance for a household
$2,500A year of support for a foster or kinship family
$10,000Subsidised housing for a resident on a fixed income
$50,000+A cottage, or a named programme
Illustrative tiers, drawn from the ANARA development plan. Final figures will be set by the feasibility study and published once programme costs are verified.
Talk to us about givingWhere we are today
Stage
Phase 1 — community before land
Region
Chicagoland, 5–15 acre search
Structure
Waqf foundation, retreats arm, app company
Next deliverable
ANARA feasibility study
ANARA is early and says so plainly. Advisory council members, licensing partners and audited figures will be listed here as they are confirmed — nothing is claimed before it is true.
Founder
About Soofia
Soofia Ahmed is ANARA's founder and director, a community builder and educator focused on intergenerational healing, prevention, and dignity-centered care. ANARA comes out of years spent inside systems built to manage people, not help them heal. Soofia saw the gaps up close, through caregiving, through community work, through a leadership path that's taken her from one side of the table to the other. ANARA is her answer: a place built to actually meet the need, not just document it.
Connect
Join us in cultivating wellbeing and belonging.
Reach out
- AnaraWellness.com
- Soofia@AnaraWellness.com
- +1 312 533 1009